Tag Archives: Louis XIV

No description of Sanssouci would be complete without reference to Louis XIV’s great palace and garden landscape at Versailles. This was such a statement of power, splendour and taste that even 30 years after Louis’s death, diminutive copies were still … Continue reading →

The highlight of my trip to Paris was always going to be a visit to Chantilly. I had visited Versailles, Fontainbleau, Giverny and so on before but never Chantilly. From the aerial photographs it looked breath-taking but that always worries … Continue reading →

Beside the Grotto at Vaux le Vicomte can be found a pair of allegorical stone statues of a lion protecting a squirrel. The lion was meant to represent Louis XIV, the tiny squirrel Nicolas Fouquet (whose name in … Continue reading →

It’s a strange sensation when you study the face of someone who’s fallen asleep. You sense that although they are physically with you, they are not really there. It reminds me of when I was a small child lifting my … Continue reading →

How can a garden be so famous yet so little understood, be so vulgar and so magnificent at the same time, and be a symbol of overwhelming power yet so ravishingly intimate? Versailles somehow manages to be all of these … Continue reading →